Survival's True Viability?

***Question is at the bottom if you don't want to read***

I focus my time on two charaters. My Druid for Bear tanking, and my Mage for PvE DPS (Arcane). So as far as raiding goes, I either tank with my bear, or dps with my mage. I love my bear, and will not be changing it from being my main anytime soon. But I do enjoy my mage and honestly, I take it as a break from tanking when I go into our raid teams as my mage when we have other tanks. But recently I have been getting bored of doing the exact same thing throughout a whole raid (or instance) experience. And that's what I get when I play my mage. I am pretty much spamming one button the whole time. During boss fights I actually don't mind this, becasue I have enough going on with fight mechanics that I still can have fun and enjoy, but for trash (which there generally is a lot of) I am just not having fun. Even when focusing on CC, it's not enough to really mix things up enough for me to fully enjoy my time. So I took my 70 Hunter off the shelf and decided to level him and replace my mage. Problem is that I don't like Maksmanship. I tried it, and just didn't enjoy it. Tried Beast Mastery and I didn't really enjoy it. So I found myself looking to Survival, the spec that I pretty much had always played on my hunter since rolling it. I loved it. Simple and straightforward enough on spell priority, a difference between what I had to do in single target and AoE, versatility, and traps/pets are always fun (I know that's all hunter specs). So I head over to the internet to see how well SV is doing right now, and am disappointed to hear a lot of comments on MM being the only viable spec. From what I understand, SVs main issue is scaling. But I am getting mixed messages as too how much of a gap there really is. I've seen people show slight differences, and others significantly bigger.

***My question is if SV really is not viable in a raid setting? I'm not planning on bleeding edge progression, but I don't want to be playing a character that will be getting carried through things as opposed to successfully contributing towards things.***

I love Survival; I find MM a bit clunky. Survival got a 15% buff to Explosive Shot and it has made a nice difference. Survival played correctly is very viable in raids. Will you top the meter, probably not, but will you be in the top 5 or 6 in a 25 man raid, most likely.

According to femaledwarf.com, in my 378 gear ilvl (no 4-pc t12 tho), surv and BM (~400 apart) sims the highest with MM last (~2000 behind). Once you start getting up to 397 gear and on, I've been reading that MM will sim higher as it scales better. It probably won't be that huge of a difference tho...not enough that it will hurt the raid if you don't switch.

Oddly enough, I'm probably one of the few who prefer MM. Not a fan of BM and survival seems a little too "simple" to me even tho it's not really. I guess i like seeing the big numbers from MM.

With the recent buffs to survival, particularly the 15% increase to Explosive shot and removing Arcane Shot from the LnL proc, It has become the spec of choice for most Hunters. It doesn't have any "ramp up time" like MM does (double-steady shots) and is much easier to maintain damage while moving, since you only ever have to stop for cobra shots. Which with a lot of the fights requiring movement, (practically all of them minus H Ultrax) makes it in the end a better performing spec.

Not to say that MM cannot put out good numbers, just that it is more difficult to do so given fight designs. I've always been a fan of Survival since the MM rotation seems to be fairly clunky and punishing at times. However this is just my opinion, and the other hunter in my raid group prefers the opposite saying that SV is too boring ;)

SV can be boring if you are not doing it correctly, but done right there is never a moment where you are not doing something (unless there is literally nothing to attack like on normal Blackhorn now in between adds). Knowing when to use black arrow and when (and where) to launch explosive trap, Double-tapping Explosive Shot LnL Procs, and knowing how many steps you can take before needing to cobra shot again are all key micro skills, but for just starting out, the SV rotation is not nearly as unforgiving as MM.

As far as your scaling question goes, MM does scale better with ranged weapon damage. However with the current gear and Haste no longer being a necessary stat for survival once you reach 20% (which it surpasses automatically with full t13 normal) and all green stats then being reforged to 8% hit, then maximizing crit with mastery as secondary, the damage gain is significant. (askmrrobot still shows that haste is secondary for survival, but this is not true. Haste does nothing for survival since it doesn't increase the tick speed of Serpent Sting and we only need cobra shot to be 1.6 seconds) The amount of agility and green stats you get from current raid tier is significant, especially with the 10% increase to agility we get as survival.

My armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arthas/M%C3%A2c/advanced

Noted*Now so where does BM rate then. I've. been swapping between BM and sur for heroics and lfr and have noted higher numbers with BM using a spirit bear mainly. I've just tamed skarr so will try him out next in a raid but it seems my dps is 2-3k higher with BM than surv. Is this me or with my gear being mainly 378 with a couple of 397 bits is it this maybe holding my surv back. I've regularly beaten mm hunters on lfr with comparable gear in BM spec. I love the BM spec and agree with some that surv seems almost boring.

In theory - http://www.simulationcraft.org/432/Raid_T13H.html
In practice - http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overall_D...60/default/#s0

beating people in LFR for DPS is a pretty inaccurate metric for measuring DPS

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beating people in LFR for DPS is a pretty inaccurate metric for measuring DPS

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So true, the TANKS are usually beating some of the dps in LFR, doesn't mean that protection is a viable dps spec.

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Originally Posted by Fetzie

So true, the TANKS are usually beating some of the dps in LFR, doesn't mean that protection is a viable dps spec.

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Personal best (or worst) was coming second on Blackhorn with 23kdps as Prot. /cry

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Originally Posted by Vong

Noted*Now so where does BM rate then. I've regularly beaten mm hunters on lfr with comparable gear in BM spec.

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I think at this point most players know that MM Hunter only has 2 types; Great and Awful. There is no halfway point, because you either get it or you don't when it comes to the MM Shot rotation.

As far as beating MM hunters in LFR, I've done that with my Prot Warrior (yes, protection) so that's not saying too much. BM is good on some fights and not as ideal for others, but some (roughly half) of the fights are punishing in a sense to the MM rotation due to the constant interruption and having to re-apply improved steady shot with a double-steady shot ramp up. (phasing out for H Ultrax, changing targets on black phase of H Zon'ozz, the rapid target switching on H Blackhorn Ph1) So in a sense BM can be superior to MM.

However, this does not mean that it, by design, is capable of better performance than survival. If you are pulling better numbers from BM than you are from survival than you just need to practice survival more. The only fights in DS that I would even consider going BM for would be Ultrax and Morchok, and even then it'd just be for S's & G's. All the other fights the travel time for the pet is just lost dps, since roughly 50% of BM's damage is done by the pet. If your pet isn't in range, you're losing half your damage (and you can't even cast kill command, your #1 damage attack).

So if all you plan on doing is LFR, then by all means enjoy BM and play how you want (I AFK thru fights half the time), but if you are looking to maximize your output then you should practice your survival spec more, because it will grant you the largest benefit.

The burst damage on a short cooldown makes BM a competitive spec for heroic Spine.

Okies. Ty.